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Thursday 20 March 1986

…Did SMP and Ginn Reading today. Also we did eight-a-side football in Games. While we did that classes 3 and 2 watched The NeverEnding Story…

The end of term was approaching, but for some reason our class was denied the traditional treat of spending an afternoon watching a hired video cassette of a feature-length film on the school television set.

I would’ve been furious about this, especially given what we were made to do instead.

At the end of the previous term, we’d got to watch The Dark Crystal, which I’d told my diary was “brilliant – and it was all done with puppets”. On the ball as ever.

In fact we’d had a double treat that term, as the day before The Dark Crystal we’d had the afternoon off school because of an “infants party” and had gone to the cinema to watch Santa Claus – The Movie. My verdict? “Absolutely on the dot brilliant*, especially the special effects.”

Of those two totems of primary school learning, I’m pleased to see that the Ginn reading scheme is kind of still going, albeit as part of the Pearson empire, while the School Mathematics Project has become a charity devoted to producing teaching materials and professional support, probably no longer of wipe-clean oversized-playing-card stock.

As for The NeverEnding Story, the same person responsible for this pan-European fluff was also the mastermind behind the fantastic they’re-all-doomed three-and-a-half-hours-in-a-submarine war epic Das Boot. Who knew? (Not me for a good many years, I’m ashamed to admit).